Can you imagine sitting through 19+ hours of 1 - 1 1/2 hour sermons by a COG minister expounding on the ten commandments! Who in the hell needs to listen to 19+ hours of sermons about the 10 Commandments????? The lake of fire sounds more appealing! Throw me in it right now!
No Jesus, but tons and tons of law.
John Ritenbaugh at CGG.org (Church of the Great God) has given a 19 part series on the 10 commandments
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When I saw that title I immediately thought, John Ritenbaugh. John was scheduled to come here to Greenville before I was but then he was sent to Charlotte. I almost ended up renting his home that he had bought here in Greenville but could not afford it. I told some here be thankful he did not stay here as I knew of these marathon sermon series on not just the Big Ten but actually on HOW to keep them. Needless to say it was exhausting.
John also was not a fan of sunglasses since Matthew 6:22 reminds one ""The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light." It was therefore inappropriate to block the light. I suspect he would have made a terrible hunter in the arctic...snow blindness and all.
How these goofballs rise to the top of the COG ladder has always been an enigma to me. Nice guys, with common sense and not given to wild and strange speculations were crushed and thrown away like old soda cans and the mentally unstable and self serving rose to the top, whatever that is.
I guess I have issues...lol
"COG Minister Preaches 19+ Hours of Sermons On The 10 Commandments"
Someone in the WCG should have preached at least something, sometime about the Ten Commandments. Under Joseph W. Tkach, Sr., the people in the WCG behaved like they had never heard anything about the Ten Commandments.
Interestingly, the same was true in the larger splinter groups like PCG, GCG, and UCG. The people in these groups behaved like they had never heard anything about the Ten Commandments. These splinter groups were in actual practice all just continuing on with Joseph W. Tkach, Sr.'s doctrinal changes against the laws of God such as the Ten Commandments.
The WCG, PCG, GCG, and UCG were all so full of outright liars bearing false witness against other church members, sex perverts fornicating and committing adultery, thieves coveting and stealing, people misusing God's name and trampling on the Sabbath day, etc., that nobody wanted to hear about the Ten Commandments. The leaders in all these groups knowingly supported the bad behavior.
As someone said recently, these people in PCG, GCG/LCG, UCG/COGwa, etc. need to "consider their ways."
I wonder whether he filled the 19 hours with repetition, taking forever to make his point, a fault of many of the WCG ministry of old and apparently their descendants, or if he provides new depths and insights. But, I'm not going to waste 19 hours listening to warmed over Armstrong theology to find out. I'm sure it would be heavy on the Old Covenant and largely avoiding New Covenant applications, which was typically HWA's approach.
BB
We went to CGG, loosely for almost 10 years. Like father, like son, Richard R. gave a 10 part series on Noah's ark. My Mom said she could have given it in about 15 seconds - "big boat that floated on water, carrying a lot of animals". Of course, as my dad used to say before he died, some people, ie, many COG ministers could always cram 15 minutes of information into an hour and a half and still leave people wondering what they were trying to say..
It seems to me that the whole of Christendom has forgotten what the "good news" was.
"And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people...on earth peace, good will toward men." (Luke 2:10-14).
The gospel was that all people were included in the new covenant, Jews AND gentiles (even women!). Everybody would know that if they had read Gal. 3:28-29.
That was the good news. Not the restoration of the kingdom to Israel following world war III or some such wrath of God. Since when is destruction good news? And why would gentiles of the first century care if Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed?
"As someone said recently, these people in PCG, GCG/LCG, UCG/COGwa, etc. need to 'consider their ways.'"
"Since when is destruction good news?"
In my experience, those I know who were raised without religion, who spent their lives without the belief in a deity put most COG people I've ever met to shame. These "heathen" unbelievers act like much better "christians." They'are truly kind instead of phony "nice", generous to a fault, they're not filled with the vanity of self-righteousness, they don't judge everyone because they're not trying to be something they're not.
Whether Jesus was real or a fictional character, the figure portrayed in the canonical gospels is a very zen kind of teacher. The only position from which it is possible for the disciple to behave as the master teaches, he must also first learn to approach it from a zen kind of place. But especially the COG form of christianity is anything but zen. It's unforgiving, it's competitive (something that HWA preached against but in practice deliberately fostered in many ways), it's militant and cantankerous, and it puts the disciple in the position of having to perform either undefined or else impossible tasks. Either way, success can never be assured, and failure can never be avoided. Naturally, pretense and hypocrisy are guaranteed, unless one "falls into the clutches of satan" and abandons such crazyness. Anything but zen.
As an outsider to this religion (WCOG and off-shoots), it seems to me that this particular religion is filled with hate and infliction of pain, while very rarely talking about love and positive things. It is very punitive and I keep wondering if the people who follow this and similar religions had abusive, rigid parents as children. After all, isn't "god" just a psychological projection of a person's inner emotional life. Wouldn't we all like a kind, consistent, loving father (or mother) who was all powerful and could always make everything Ok. I don't know but it seems like I gave up on that at about age 6 or 7 when I realized that parents weren't perfect or all-powerful and that there wasn't really a Santa Claus.
Yes, SHB, those things you mention have been our cross to bear throughout our early lives and recovery. Many overts and many subliminals. Unfortunately one of the subliminals was institutionalized hatred towards those who do not keep the law. Believe it or not, I actually had to be taught as part of my recovery that God loves us more than He hates sin.
BB
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